Mastery Assessment Essays Examples

Introduction

The placement agency that I had the opportunity to work in focuses on basically placing the right people on the right job. The various responsibilities and tasks of the placement agency include gathering all the qualifications that employees are looking for in their workers, acquiring applications for interested individuals, screening potential employees, and matching them with the employers or companies that best suit their qualifications.
Working in the agency provided me with numerous learning opportunities. The most valuable of all is learning how to work in a team. There was a perfect combination of competition and cooperation among the people in the placement agency. This taught me how to give my best in everything that I do in order to make a name for myself. But at the same time, it also taught me how to work with different kinds of people.
Another learning opportunity that my placement in the agency provided me with was how to function within the inner workings of companies. Not only did it teach me various aspects of job postings, screening, interviewing, hiring, and job placing; it also taught me the human resource management side of companies. This is extremely valuable knowledge because employees are the backbone of any organization. Being able to find the best people for the job is crucial to the success of any business.
Lastly, and perhaps the most important learning opportunity that I gained in my placement was the importance and intricacy of supervision. Supervision was a huge aspect of how the agency functioned. It was a work place that relied heavily on the relationships of people with one another and how one person can teach or train another person. Within this working environment, I experienced what it was like to be supervised and, at some point, to even supervise somebody else myself.

Supervision Within Agency

The kind of supervision that I went through was highly favorable. First of all, to understand my experience in supervision within the agency, it is important to understand the structure of the agency’s workplace. The placement agency, as with any other company, had an executive board. Under the executive board there were the managers and under the managers, the rest of the staff.
Being one of the staff, my main supervisor was a manager. His approach, just like with any other team leader and manager in the placement agency, was a psychotherapeutic one. A psychotherapeutic approach focuses on the supervisee’s personal growth and development (Howe and Gray, 2013, p4). Even though our jobs were performance based and specific outputs were expected from us such as a quota of employees assigned per week, the approach of the supervisors were still focused on improving us as people instead of just workers. They engaged us in regular dialogue and encouraged us to reflect on our own performances instead of just spoon feeding us with step-by-step methods that we should strictly abide by.
The reason behind their psychotherapeutic approach is simple. The placement agency had a philosophy that all supervisors must live out, and that philosophy is that a happy worker produces outcome while a sad worker simply stresses out. In other words, if a worker is too focused on the results that are expected of him, then he wouldn’t be able to function properly because he would simply be too focused on doing the job without being actually emotionally invested in it (Irwin, 2010, p41).
The supervision that took place in the placement agency also varied. There was formal supervision wherein supervisors are required to give feedback on a regular basis. This could be in the form of annual, biannual, or quarterly written evaluation forms of the employees. This formal supervision of supervisors included being able to describe the workmanship, performance, and behavior of an employee (Howe and Gray, 2013, p3). The emphasis here is described because formal supervision doesn’t start with judging but with describing. Formal supervision also includes praising the employees for a good performance whether it may be a consistenly good performance or an increased performance. My supervisor for this agency also encouraged self-assessment and peer reviews as part of the formal supervision.
On the contrary, there was also an informal supervision that took place. Informal supervision includes meetings that discuss the work being done within the placement agency and how the paid staff feels about it. During these meetings, the paid staff can raise questions, suggestions, and opinions about the job. Informal supervision also includes supervisors helping supervisees with their personal issues that could influence their work performance. Instead of a manager to employee relationship, this encourages more like a partnership between the two (Davy and Beddoe, 2010, p55)
During the pre-practicum, I was able to practice how to collaborate with my supervisee. Being a supervisor entails a lot of collaborative work because it is not just a one-way process. It involves a lot of openness to feedback and a certain humility to be able to monitor oneself (Davy and Beddoe, 2010, p59). In this stage, not only was I able to motivate my supervisee adequately, I was also able to learn more about her and used that newly found knowledge to aid me in the next stage which is the beginning. Having learned more about my supervisee, I was able to enter the process of negotiating with her extremely smoothly. At this stage, we were able to properly discuss our expectations of one another and how exactly to meet those expectations (Davy and Beddoe, 2010, p60).
The next stage which is middle, was perhaps the easiest and most enjoyable stage for me. The same also held true when I was the one being supervised. This is because the middle stage includes finally developing and maintaining a genuine relationship between the supervisor and supervisee (Davy and Beddoe, 2010, p52). Because the agency’s approach to supervision is psychotherapeutic, our supervisees are not passive. They also contribute in the process of supervision. Because of this, I was able to establish authenticity, respect, and a mutual openness to learning with my sueprvisee. Because the middle stage was extremely easy, the end stage became so as well. Conducting regular reviews of my supervisee’s performance was always gratifying because not only did it show just how much she improved but also because it showed just how effective my supervision was.
As a summary, the general approach of supervision within the placement agency was both successful and enjoyable. It created long lasting friendships and improved the workplace’s productivity. If there is only one thing that can be seen as problematic is that supervisors have the tendency to supervise those people who are of the same gender and ethnicity as they are. Since diversity in workplace is becoming an increasing trend due to globalization, the placement agency would eventually need to train its supervisors to be able to learn how to supervise people who are of different genders and ethnicities.
Comparing the formal and informal supervision that I went under, I can conclude that both kinds of supervisions are necessary for productive employees and paid staff. The formal supervision helps the agency keep track of their work force while encouraging consistently excellent job outputs. Meanwhile, the informal supervision keeps the paid staff happy and fulfilled in their job. It makes them feel that their thoughts and personal lives matter to the company; thus, making them enjoy their work a lot better.

References

Davy, A. and Beddoe, L., 2010. Best practice in professional supervision: A guide for the helping professions. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Howe, K., and Gray, I., 2013. Effective supervision in social work. Los Angeles: SAGE Publishing.
Irwin, J., 2010. Skills for human service practice; working with individuals, groups and communities. Ontario: Oxford University Press.